Tetralones are very important intermediates for synthesizing various compounds such as bioactive agents or photochromic dyes. Among the various tetralone compounds, 1-tetralones are relatively inexpensive to make and are readily available. However, 2-tetralones such as 1-aryl-3,4-dihydro-1H-naphthalene-2-one are prepared through complex production processes and are not readily available. The synthesis of 1-substituted-2-tetralones generally requires a multi-step process. For example, the most common method for synthesizing 1-aryl-2-tetralones involves reacting a 1-tetralone B with an aryl magnesium bromide A via a Grignard reaction (Scheme 1). The reaction product C is subsequently dehydrated to produce a double bond (compound D). The double bond is then converted to an epoxide (compound E), which is then converted to the desired 1-aryl-2-tetralone F.

In addition to the synthetic procedure depicted in Scheme 1, other methods have been developed to produce 1-aryl-2-tetralones. However, these methods are not selective with respect to the substitution pattern on the 2-tetralone. For example, mixtures of 1-aryl-2-tetralones and 3-aryl-2-tetralones are produced, which requires expensive and tedious separation techniques to isolate the desired 1-aryl-2-tetralone. Therefore, it would be desirable to have synthetic procedure for producing 1-aryl-2-tetralones from 2-tetralone is a highly selective manner and in the least number of reaction steps.